Occasional Paper 3: Hidden from Herstory: Women, Feminism and the New Global Solidarity

The women's movement has long been active internationally and is often considered
the exemplar of both the new social movements and a new kind of
internationalism. Yet it is difficult to find even a single theoretical article
on the historical or contemporary forms of feminist internationalism. There is,
also, limited historical or contemporary research directly on the problem. It is
therefore necessary to first ask why this might be so and then suggest how the
vacuum might be filled. The extensive literature around the subject, does
provide a sufficient basis for such theorising. There also exists a relevant
body of feminist and other emancipatory writing which could contribute to the
construction of such a theory.

There
remains a need for identifying the various possible fields for specialised
research, and rubrics for possible overviews. We also need
theoretically-informed studies of cases, types, forms and axes of international
solidarity with and between women. The absence of systematic strategic or policy
discussion on feminist internationalism is a further problem.

Recognition
of the specificities of international solidarity between women could make its
own contribution to an understanding of a new global solidarity of people and
peoples more generally.

Peter
Waterman teaches on alternative social movements, international relations and
communications within the new M.A. Programme on the Politics of Alternative
Development Strategies at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. Since
1984 he has been researching alternative international relations and
communications, with special reference to the Third World and labour (the
Demintercom Project).

He
has produced numerous papers, journalistic articles, several self-published
low-cost collections, bibliographies, etc. The academic papers, many of which
have been published elsewhere in more permanent form, have mostly first appeared
as ISS 'Working Papers' (Nos. 21, 28, 32, 37, 39, 42, 61, 76, 97, 110, 129). He
is working on a book provisionally entitled 'From Labour Internationalism to
Global Solidarity'.

The development of this paper from a simple bibliographical note provides a case
study in the difficult relations between female feminists and (pro-)feminist
men. This story is too long, complex, painful (and funny) to be told here. The
fact that the paper did develop owes much to two feminist friends, activists and
thinkers: Gina Vargas, of the Flora Tristan Women's Centre in Peru, and Marieme
Helie-Lucas, from Algeria, who coordinates a network on Women Living Under
Muslim Laws. Both reacted warmly to earlier drafts. They circulated these to
their own networks. They invited me to contribute to feminist workshops. As a
result of such efforts, an earlier draft of this paper is to be published in
Spanish (Waterman Forthcoming) and possibly in Portuguese. Thanks are also due
to the participants in an informal workshop on the theme held at the Institute
of Social Studies in The Hague, April 1992. These included Gina and Marieme, Ewa
Charkiewicz (Poland), Nira Yuval-Davis (Israel / UK), Sylvia Borren (New Zealand
/ Netherlands), Anissa Helie (Algeria / France), Loes Keysers (Netherlands) and
Helma Lutz (Germany / Netherlands). They seem to me to represent some kind of
'feminism without frontiers' - a view of this world and an alternative one,
developed by and for women but also addressed and available to the other 49
percent of us. I below make considerable use of one or two contributions to the
workshop. Without the encouragement, warmth and humour of these 'companeras' I
would have continued to feel like Sandra Harding's Lurking Monster: A kind of
monster lurks in the logic of white feminist discourses: he is a white,
economically privileged, Western, heterosexual man - and he is a feminist too.
(Harding 1991 a: 278).

The
purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the women's
movement - the 'prototypical' new social movement - and international
solidarity. The exercise will be tentative because of the relative scarcity of
contemporary case studies and the virtual absence of theorising on the subject.
This paper is the draft of the last but-one chapter of a book I am writing under
the working title, 'From Labour Internationalism to Global Solidarity'. I hope
to complete the manuscript by the end of 1992. Earlier chapters direct
themselves primarily to labour and socialist internationalism - to considering
the old internationalism in a new light. In so far as the contemporary
'international women's movement' (the meaning of which is itself problematic) is
a new type of movement and has developed separately from, or in opposition to,
the labour and socialist ones (which is also questionable), it provides original
inputs into an understanding of a new, pluralistic and multi-faceted 'global
solidarity'. As we will see, this paper moves us in such a direction. The last
chapter of my planned book will, therefore, attempt to generalise from this
particular experience to the possible meaning of 'global solidarity' more
generally. It will be exploratory in the sense of seeking within the activity,
and within other relevant theory, lessons for a new kind of international
solidarity more generally. Whether or not the women's movement is considered the
prototypical NSM, it has a rich experience of international solidarity, and it
is the richest source of contemporary emancipatory social
theory.

The
relative absence of writing on international solidarity between women provides a
stimulus to the form of this paper; that of presenting it as a research problem.
I will below consider in turn: the relationship between feminism and
internationalism (Part 2); case studies revealing the problematic relationships
both between women internationally and between feminism and internationalism
(Part 3); the growing literatures around, if not always directly on, such topics
(Part 4); various research needs (Part 5). The conclusion considers the
contribution that an understanding of women's movement internationalism can make
to an understanding of a new kind of global solidarity more generally (Part
6).

2. Missing links

2.1. Hidden from herstory

There is a long history, and a rich and varied contemporary experience, of
international relations and solidarity in the women's movement. This is evoked
for me by the name Flora Tristan. The historical figure was a declassed
French-Peruvian aristocrat, social outcast and cosmopolitan, a socialist,
feminist and internationalist. She identified herself with men and women workers
of France, the poor of London and of early C19th Peru (Mies 1983 b, Dijkstra
1992). The contemporary organisation that bears her name is a Peruvian women's
centre, set up on a voluntary basis by socialist feminists during the UN Women's
Decade. This is materially supported by Dutch funding agencies, politically and
morally by feminist academics and activists from the First World, deeply
involved in Latin-American feminist and women's networking (which took off,
significantly, not in Latin America but in Copenhagen, 1980) and in the
international women's movement more generally (Vargas 'passim'). The problems of
feminist internationalism may be evoked by the same two Floras: for one (if not
the) dominant image of internationalism between women is still that of the
relationship between middle-class progressive or feminist women of the First
World and of the poor and oppressed women of the Third (Mies 1986,
1989).

It is difficult, if not impossible, to think of either
historical or contemporary national women's movements in isolation from each
other. Indeed, it is my impression that the contemporary experience of feminist
and women's internationalism is richer, more complex and varied than that of the
contemporary labour movement. This may be, firstly, due to the lack of a
perceived threat by the international women's movement to the commanding heights
of capital or state: this has provided a relatively benign atmosphere for the
development of the movement internationally (even if it may meet the utmost
hostility or difficulty under authoritarian regimes of right and left)[2]. Considering the second wave of the feminist movement in Latin
America, Francesca Miller (1991: 192 [2346]) supports the first of these
arguments, but also reveals how even authoritarian regimes have allowed space
for the development of feminist movements. However, the liberal capitalist
states have also been prepared to stimulate ecological and human-rights
conferences and movements, and the Western trade-unions and their internationals
have benefited greatly from state funding (usually from the same 'development
aid' as has funded many women's and feminist projects in the Third World). It
may be, secondly, due to the coincidence of the new feminist movement with the
move from industrial to information capitalism, this having both provoked and
facilitated international awareness and linkages. This, however, is surely true
of the labour and other social movements also. It may be, thirdly, that the very
novelty and energy of the feminist movement - and the absence of any feminist
equivalent to the bureaucratic international socialist or union organisations -
that has provided space for a new wave. And that the sensitivity of the women's
movement to the multiple levels and forms of domination has promoted the
exploration of new forms and contents for international contacts (Boulding 1975,
Bernard 1987). These movements may, in any case, be all the more effective in
the long term for their operation at the margins, or in the interstices, of
overt economic or political power concentrations and conflicts internationally.
It may be, finally, due precisely to the global address of the contemporary
feminist movement. By 'global' here, I mean not simply worldwide but 'holistic'
(Bunch 1987 b: 301-5, 334, 339). Women's movements are evidently rooted in
territorial places - communal, national, regional. And they just as evidently
address themselves primarily to the region of gender relations. But, as is
evident from the international declarations referred to below, it is common
cross-national or global problems that are in the forefront of their attention.
And the inter-relation of women's emancipation and other emancipatory struggles
is customarily made explicit.[3] It is, again, Francisca Miller who reveals the intimate
interconnections of both waves of Latin-American feminism to much broader
political issues. This is true of the predominantly liberal feminism of the
earlier period and the predominantly socialist one of the present (Miller 1990,
1991).

2.2. A women's movement activity without a feminist theory

Given the above, why does there not seem to be even one theoretical book or article about women and international solidarity, nor one
theoretically informed history of this? Even international surveys and articles
with titles like 'Sisterhood is Global' or 'Planetary Feminism' (Morgan 1984 a,
b, Papandreou 1988, Schreiner 1988) either assume a shared identity and common
response or fail to problematise the relationship between the sisters
globally.[4] This is precisely identified and convincingly criticised in the
process of a friendly review of the Morgan anthology by Chandra Mohanty (1992:
83-4). She says: 'Universal sisterhood, defined as the transcendence of the
'male' world ... ends up being a middle-class, psychologised notion which
effectively erases material and ideological power differences within and among
groups of women, especially between First and Third World (and, paradoxically,
removes us all as actors from history and politics). It is in this erasure of
difference as inequality and dependence that the privilege of Morgan's political
'location' [in New York City] might be visible. Ultimately in this reductive
utopian vision, men 'participate' in politics while women can only hope to
'transcend' them. It should additionally be pointed out that Morgan's claim to
present an anthology on 'The International Women's Movement' is actually a
collection on 'national' women's movements, with little reference to any
international organisations, activities or ideas - apart from an item on women
in the UN (Hedevary 1985) and her own asserted transcendental ethic. The same is
generally - though not entirely - true of special issues of journals on the
topic. (Feminist 1980, Lova 1986, Quest 1978 a, Woman of Power 1987, Women's
Studies International Forum 1991). Even the documents of - and most papers on -
international feminist conferences do not do this (see First Women's Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe 1990, Isis International 1990 a,
Mujer/Fempress 1991, South Asian Feminist Declaration 1991, Sternbach et.al.
1992, Vargas et. al. 1991).[5] One exception to the rule is the chapter on the period 1974-90 of
Miller (1992), which includes 'international feminism' in its title. Another is
the conference report and reflections of Keysers and Smith (1991). Both will be
returned to below.

How
is this possible in a movement otherwise so sensitive to history, theory and
strategy? It seems to me that it may be because there is no established liberal
or socialist discourse here that would stimulate or provoke a feminist reaction.
It may also be because of the incorporation/subordination of
'internationalism' by or into other theoretical/ideological discourses - such
as those on Dependency, Development, International Relations, Race, Class and
Culture (see Goetz 1991, Grant and Newland 1991, Mohanty 1991 a, b, 1992,
Newland' 1991). Possibly - and more positively - it may again be because the new
movements see their problems much more in global than in international
terms.

Yet
we know of numerous tensions between feminists 'internationally: a contemporary
Flora Tristan might be met on landing in the Third World with denunciation as a
White Western Middle-Class Bourgeois Liberal Feminist. We know of many problems
in creating solidarity between women across significant borders or boundaries,
such as Western ones 'benefiting' from cheap goods produced by Third World ones
(Mies 1986, 1989). Or Third World feminists 'failing to show solidarity' with
their Black sisters from the First World (Hooks 1986 or 1991). Or of
guilt-ridden, leftwing, First World feminists who see the racist mote in the eye
of the First World, whilst missing the racist beam in that of the Third
(Helie-Lucas 1991 or Makelem 1990). We know of missing links in the
internationalist chain: the West-East one has been weak (Mamanova 1988), the
East-South one is possibly non-existent. Attempts to deal with these in
dichotomous terms (particularly North: South, Black: White, or even Male:
Female) are increasingly recognised to be part of the problem rather than of the
solution. But direct address to alternative principles and strategies of
international relations are still rare.

There
are here fundamental issues requiring attention. What exactly do we mean by 'the
international women's movement': personal empowerment on a world scale? global
networking? international organisations? a global culture? Or all of these, in
eclectic and universalistic embrace (Bernard 1987). What is the relationship
between the international feminist movement (whatever that means) and such an
international women's movement? What is the class or ethnic relationship between
women's movements internationally - if we are to avoid simple centre-periphery
or dominator-dominated models (see Bulbeck 1988, Joseph and Lewis 1981, Mies
1986, 1989, Mitter 1986)?

3. Suitable cases for treatment

There are numerous paradoxes of international relations between women and women's
movements that need to be understood before they become problems, and then
mutually-destructive disputes. I will consider two or three problematic cases,
areas or axes here, without necessarily pretending to have solutions to
them.

3.1.
The questions solidarity poses

Let
us consider the significance of Western capitalist state funding for women's -
and even socialist-feminist - projects in the Third World. What happens to 'the
gender approach', to 'empowerment' and 'autonomy' when they not only become part
of First-World state development strategies but even some kind of 'progressive
conditionality' on the basis of which - for example - Dutch state or
non-governmental organisation (NGO) aid may be granted to backward' Latin
American or African states or NGOs? If it is suggested that we here have a
process by which Western feminists, and even their Third
World counterparts, are successfully pressurising the North American or West European
governments to recognise Third World women's interests, what model of
representation is operating here, what theory explains this practice, what ethic
informs it? How does the concept and practice of the 'pressure group' (from
liberal pluralist theory and practice) relate to that of the emancipatory social
movement? Should feminists even associate themselves with the Western, racist,
capitalist and patriarchal discourse and practice of development, a discourse
that excludes emancipation and subordinates democratisation (Lumis
1991).

Some of the problems are revealed, but not again discussed, in an article by Kathleen
Staudt, who has written widely on women, feminism, development aid, and aid
bureaucracies (1985, 1987, 1990). Her 1987 article is on a women's centre in the
'maquiladora' zone of Mexico, the cheap-labour export-processing area on the
border with the US. Staudt's study suggests contradictions between 'reformist'
and 'radical' elements in its programme. She employs an evolutionary empowerment
model, rising from the personal level through networking to an organisational
one. Questions not raised in her paper, nor in the whole collection of which it
forms part, are the following. How, in terms of feminism or women's solidarity,
can we understand the US Inter-American Foundation's role in funding such an
evaluation (if not the project itself)? How, in the same terms, are we to
understand the relationship of the US feminist researcher to the Mexican
(feminist? women's?) project, its organisers and its beneficiaries? Even if one
accepts Staudt's empowerment model (new social movement theorists consider the
network a 'higher' form than the organisation), what are the implications for
feminist solidarity of such a North-to-South movement of concepts or models? And
their specific institutional or academic channelling?

Supposing
that one accepts that government ministries and state-funded development
agencies do provide a 'traditional space' (c.f. Vargas 1991 a on the women's
movement in Peru) for feminists to contest, by what token can it be demonstrated
that they are taming the white, male, capitalist, imperial or bureaucratic
tiger, and not just being taken for a ride? Should it not be a requirement of
feminist (or union) activity within aid that 'aid' be interpreted within a
'solidarity' discourse, instead of the latter being assumed inherent to the
former? And that the struggle should be seen primarily as one of replacing the
institutions and procedures of aid (tax-funded, government-controlled,
state-administered or supervised, top-down, on a donor/recipient model) by those
of solidarity (publicly-contributed, publicly and democratically-controlled,
movement supervised, on the horizontal axis and an inter-active
model)?

In
so far as one is involved in a dialogue with development politicians or
administrators (or those major national and international agencies tagged by
Graham Hancock 1991 the 'Lords of Poverty') should this not be in function of an
autonomous international solidarity network of feminists and women (otherwise
'donors' and 'recipients')? How, in a minimally more technical or specialised
sense, would we distinguish (or oppose?) 'bad' government aid and 'good'
government aid (for a 'good' social-democratic aid agency in Latin America, see
Evers 1982). Material on the basis of which such questions could be raised does
exist, although little of it raises these questions (Ford-Smith 1990,
Himmelstrand 1990, Jensen 1990, Kardam 1990, Ministry of Development Cooperation
1991, Moser 1991, Vrouwenberaad 1989, Wieringa 1990, Yudelman
1990).

One
is here also involved in often considerable flows of cash, from quite specific
sources to quite specific projects, organisations and individuals (and not to
others). Shouldn't this aspect of the relationship - at once the most material
and the least visible - receive more than the passing mention, the occasional
footnote? Particularly where a sometimes considerable proportion of the 'aid to
Third World women' is actually paying for First World institutes and
consultancies, researchers and consultants, at First World rates? I am evidently
not proposing that we limit our understanding of the international relationship
on the North-South axis to 'the foreign hand' (as do Gandhi and Shah 1991:
303-7), but that it should be treated openly and frankly, according to feminist
principle (as attempted by Gandhi and Shah and by Ford-Smith). Treatment of this
potentially explosive/destructive issue should not be left to the Thirdworldist
or fundamentalist left (Karat 1984, Petras 1990: 2148), nor to the rightwing or
muckraking journalists (Eppink and v. Straaten 1991 a, b). Yet they seem to be
the only ones who actually present figures or make criticism of the cash nexus.
Refusing to face this issue would seem to indicate the guilt and dependency
inevitably associated with development and aid; confronting it would seem to
suggest the mutual responsibility associated with solidarity.

In so
far, finally, as many feminist academics, professionals and organisers are
simultaneously engaged in and committed to both 'development' and 'autonomy', I
do feel there is an obligation to confront the increasing criticism not simply
on the political but also on the professional and personal levels. Susan George
puts the issue squarely: [I]n
one crucial respect, people working in the field of 'development' are wholly
disqualified from claiming 'professional' status. Unlike other, genuine,
professionals, they are accountable to no one (except in the normal hierarchical
way). If they make a mess of a development project, they will not be there to
see it and they can walk away from their victims, towards the next disaster. In
the realm of their professional conduct, they are not even accountable to
themselves or to their fellow members of the corporation because they are not
held to any particular ethical norms [...] In the development domain, no
universally accepted measures, no acknowledged methods exist for distinguishing
fact from dogma, truth from falsehood, success from failure, myth from reality.
As a consequence, the practice of these 'professionals' can proceed forever with
no reality check ever intervening. The fact that most of them, and the agencies
they work for, are totally beyond the reach of any sort of political
accountability as well only serves to make matters worse. (George 1992:
168-9).
What
such a criticism would seem to imply, if it is to be taken on board by those
involved in development and aid projects at either end of the international
relationship, is not simply a sense of responsibility and a practice of
openness. It also suggests the necessity for discrimination between particular
projects and practices, and the public pronouncement and personal assumption of
a feminist ethic amongst development professionals.

3.2.
South v. North, movements v. institutions, good v. evil

Related
to, but distinct from, the above problem is that of the many contemporary
women's movements that seem to operate both inside and outside international
agencies and to see international solidarity solely or primarily as a
North/South issue. One of them is on health and reproductive rights and it has
given rise to one of the few serious reflections on what it itself calls 'global
solidarity' (Keysers and Smyth 1991. C.f. Mies 1992, Reinalda and Verhaaren
1989: 279-82, UBINIG 1992).

The
report is primarily on the 6th International Women and Health Meeting, Manila,
1990, attended by some 500 women from 60 countries. But it also gives an
overview of previous conferences, starting with a first one in Europe, 1977. It
mentions a movement away from 'individual choice' in matters of contraception,
etc, to questions of community-level health needs, and to recognition of the
necessity for global organisation and action against the powerful national and
international population control and health institutions. This movement has been
accompanied over time by criticism of Eurocentric discourse within the movement,
and insistence that a variety of Third World experiences and voices be
heard.

The
Manila meeting was concerned precisely with the creation of global solidarity
for women's health and reproductive rights. An opening address linked issues of
women's health with global economic crisis, militarisation, violence against
women, and international population-control policies. Two planned workshops, on
'Redefining Global Solidarity' and maintaining 'Feminist Integrity in Mainstream
Organisations' were merged, leading to intensive and animated exchanges on
research, funding, communication, organisational networking, campaigns, as well
as on such issues as co-optation, institutionalisation, radicalism versus
reformism, racism and classism. Women from the Third World raised
their concerns over the existing unequal distribution of resources (information
and funds) between them and their sisters in the North. Information should not
only be disseminated from the established institutes but there should also be an
active sharing of experiences, strategies, ideas, etc. amongst all women in the
health networks, implying that also South-South and South-North communication
should be facilitated. (Keysers and Smyth 1991: 28) Both
the Third World organisations and their funders expressed a desire to 'attain a
more empowering funding relationship' (ibid).

Despite
this apparently rather advanced agenda, Loes Keysers and Inez Smith identify the
operation of both explicit and implicit dichotomies during the meeting. The
explicit one was between the international institutions (World Bank, Population
Council, International Planned Parenthood Federation) and the grassroots
organisations. This is, however, underlaid by 'a more elaborate dichotomy',
which, 'for the very fact of remaining unspoken, is highly dangerous' (ibid).
They present this diagrammatically as follows:

Institutionalisation Grassroots work
North South
White Black
Rich Poor

In terms of power:
Dominant Marginal
Powerful Powerless

Keysers and Smyth recognise the real-world origins of such a dichotomy in the
North/South divide, the death of the early myth of global sisterhood, and in the
appropriation of feminist language and concerns by powerful rightwing
institutions. At the same time, however, they see it as simplistic, since it
implies that institutions are unproblematically evil and the grassroots
unproblematically good. And also because it 'carries a heavy burden of personal,
individualised accusations and distrust' (29) against feminists working within
the institutions.

The
authors consider it necessary, with respect to the institutions, to distinguish
incorporation from meaningful access, and, with respect to the grassroots, to
recognise the danger of self-isolation. They conclude here that it is important to realise that the two sides of the dichotomy raise problems and
questions which have much in common: the danger of marginalisation on the part
of the grassroots groups is mirrored by the risk of cooption on the other. The
scarcity of resources and the financial vulnerability... of the grassroots
groups, has echoes in the question of accountability which work within
'mainstream' institutions raises. The problems of efficiency and efficacy
experienced by grassroots organisations appear as a carbon copy of those which,
on the other side, emerge from working in highly hierarchical and bureaucratic
systems. (ibid). They
propose, as antidote to the common problems, and the asserted or implied
dichotomies, the possibility and necessity of cooperation: [M]uch
can be done to prevent the marginalisation of grassroots organisations by the
transmission of information from those located in the agencies/organisations in
which such information is produced or simply available. Those working in
powerful institutions, on the other hand, would find guidance in the thorny
question of accountability if grassroots groups made them answerable to them.
(30) The
mirrors, echoes and carbon copies here, it should be pointed out, are only so
from a 'feminist point of view'. They assume, in other words, that there 'are'
feminists, or a feminist movement, in the institutions as well as in the
grassroots organisations. If, and to the extent, that this is established, the
injunction above follows. I do not wish to add more, particularly since the
implications of the argument are spelled out elsewhere below. I would only like
to say that the positions taken here imply a much more complex and difficult
world of solidarity activity, but also one that is infinitely richer. It
suggests multiple places, spaces and levels of solidarity work, with these
essentially interdependent on each other. It is also subversive of the
deeply-rooted dichotomising of 'reform within' and 'radicalism beyond' in
national and international movements, suggesting that today each is a condition
for the existence of the other. Maybe they always have been but this has been
obscured by past civil and uncivil war between and amongst Politically Correct
progressives, blind to the advantage they were giving to the reactionary and
conservative right.

3.3.
Beyond dichotomies: internationalism in and around Latin
America

To
get beyond the North-South axis, which dominates such discourse as there is on
international solidarity within the women's movement, we can look at one
'regional internationalism' in the South. In Latin America there is now a rather
developed feminist movement (Safa 1990, Vargas 1992 and the bibliography below).
There is also possibly the most intensive and extensive feminist regional
internationalism, and one which has apparently developed in a fruitful dialectic
with a more general one. This does not mean that Latin America has escaped such
debates as those suggested above. But that a longer history of informal and
formal relations has allowed a working through and, possibly, a working beyond
such dichotomies. For the earlier period, I will limit myself to a couple of
points and a couple of comments.

Francesca
Miller (1990) is primarily concerned with the participation of Latin-American
feminists in intra-American conferences, themselves attached to the
International Conferences of American States (i.e. both North and South
America). She argues as follows: [T]he
transnational arena held a particular appeal for Latin American feminists. There
are a number of reasons this was so. Within their national communities, they
were disfranchised; and, as elsewhere, the national social and political arenas
were characterised by androcracy. Moreover, Latin American female intellectuals
were particularly alienated from politics as practised within their countries,
excluded from leadership positions by the forces of opposition as well as by
their governments. The inter-American arena in the first half of this century
proved to be an important domain for feminist activity, one in which women
activists from throughout the Americas pursued a number of the longstanding
goals of international feminism. Two of the themes that emerge in the
examination of women's concerns in this period are... legal and civil reform and
the search for international peace. (Miller 1990:*) Women played an active role in the Latin- (later Pan) American
Scientific Congresses which began in 1898. The women who attended these also
played a significant role in a first international feminist congress. According
to Reinalda and Verhaaren (1989: 103), this was not an international but a
Latin-American congress,[6] although it was attended by women from five European countries
and the United States. This took place in Buenos Aires in 1910, was sponsored by
liberal, labour and socialist organisations and took up a broad range of
feminist and social reform issues. As the scientific congresses became
politicised (i.e. diplomatic events), women felt the necessity to organise
themselves separately. Eventually there was created an Inter-American Commission
of Women within the International Conference of American
States.

According to Miller (1990: 13-14), the participants in
such conferences were neither diplomats nor spouses, nor were the Latin
Americans simply endorsing something sponsored by North American
feminists.[7] Does Miller overstate her case? The account of Reinalda
and Verhaaren (1989: 103-8) is somewhat more nuanced or complex, since it
reveals the rather active role of the inter-state bodies, and certain individual
male diplomats, to forward women's issues. This account also gives more space to
the energetic pioneering activities of the US women's movements. The
anti-imperialist Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (Foster
1989) was heavily involved and influential. One of the conferences specifically
attacked North-American imperialism. The Latin Americans also attacked their own
governments: In this era, the women active at the international level
had little tradition of identifying with the nation-state. To the contrary, they
had historically articulated their position as other, within the home, the
society, and the nation, and looked to the transnational arena as the space
where they could find mutual support from one another and publicise their
agenda. (19) The existence of the transnational arena, and of foreign
feminism, obviously also made a contribution to the development of national
ones. The veteran Colombian liberal feminist, Ofelia Uribe de Acosta, considers
the holding of an International Feminist Congress in Bogota in 1930 to have been
the beginning of the feminist movement in Colombia. In 1963, aged 63, she also
wrote a history of Colombian feminism, inspired by a global perspective I hadn't
had at the start. I read about Susan B. Anthony, about so many other women in
other countries who had faced difficult situations... This delving into the
history of other women, in other countries, during other times, gave me a lot
more self-confidence... (Torres 1986) 1 can find no record of a 1930 congress in
Bogota in the other literature. As for Anthony, she was a pioneering 19th
century US feminist, active also internationally (Reinalda and Verhaaren 1989:
19, 23).

In so far
as these women felt excluded from their national polities, we would seem to have
a parallel to labour internationalism before labour was enfranchised, unions and
parties recognised and incorporated into the nation-state. Miller, in any case,
reveals in this period no such identification with states as were to appear
during the second wave in the 1970s.

This
second wave was actually preceded by initiatives of states, inter-state
organisations, the Communist movement and Third-World movements. Given that
these all related to nation-states or blocs of such, it may be not be so
paradoxical that they actually collaborated, at different places and times, thus
providing platforms for major conflicts in Third-World/First-World,
nationalist/imperialist, socialist/capitalist, or
revolutionary-women/bourgeois-feminist terms. These conflicts found most
dramatic expression at the NGO Tribunal held at the International Women's Year
Conference, Mexico City, 1975. Here the North American Betty Friedan was taken
to represent (or played the role of?) Northern Imperialist Middle-Class
Feminist. And the Bolivian Domitila Barrios de Chungara was taken to represent
(or played the role of?) Southern Nationalist Revolutionary Proletarian Woman
(Greer 1986, Miller 1992:199-202 and the bibliography below). Cuba,
simultaneously Third-Worldist, nationalist and Communist, spearheaded
state-socialist international women's initiatives, through the FMC (Federacion
de Mujeres Cubanas/Federation of Cuban Women). Vilma Espin, revolutionary
veteran, wife of Raul Castro and Central Committee member, has led the
organisation almost as long as Fidel Castro has Cuba. She has also always
avoided calling herself a feminist. The FMC, which has played a major role in
raising women's issues and changing women's roles within Cuba, also saw itself
as the vanguard of the Women's International Democratic Federation - the
Communist front organisation for women. A statement by Castro at an FMC congress
in 1980 reveals, in all its richness (or poverty), the nature and discourse of
an internationalism of blocs as addressed to women: Our federation has undertaken a lot of important
internationalist work in the Women's International Democratic Federation, and
also in the United Nations, with IWY and the International Year of the Child...
The FMC has earned a great deal of prestige internationally, in international
bodies, in women's organisations in other countries - countries of both the
socialist camp and the capitalist camp - liberation movement organisations and
organisations of underdeveloped countries. I think that our federation has
contributed enormously to the foreign policy of the revolution. (Cited Miller
1992: 213) Under the impact of the feminist movement, both the Cuban
organisation and its relations with others in Latin America subsequently
underwent a certain change. This is a rare and promising case, since it is
usually the autonomous social movements that are drawn or pushed in the
direction of the statist ones. In this case, the Cubans were possibly both drawn
by the feminist wave and pushed by the increasing isolation and decline of world
Communism. Unfortunately, however, the FMC (like the party of which it is a
front organisation) seems to prefer to sink whilst flying the flag of
revolutionary anti-imperialist womanhood than to tack to meet the post-Communist
winds. At a Spanish-sponsored international forum on 'Women, Political Power and
Development', Seville, September 1992, Vilma Espin was both marginalised by the
sponsors and self-marginalised by her own archaic discourse. The Latin American
feminists present revealed their pluralism and generosity of spirit in defending
and even promoting her within the forum (Personal Communication). She may have
appreciated the gesture, but it seems likely that it would be evaluated by the
space it provided for Cuban Communist discourse on women, not as a model of
behaviour to be learned from and emulated. Looking at the five Feminist
Encounters that have taken place between 1981 and 1990 (Miller 1992, Sternbach
et. al. 1992, Vargas 1992 a and the bibliography below), it seems to me that the
feminist movement in Latin America has been able to reject such discourses
whilst still addressing itself to the women's experiences they articulated. This
may be because the major social source of the new wave of feminism was neither
the traditional political / state elites nor the 'popular women's movement'
organised by populist, socialist or Communist parties. They came largely from
the same ranks as those involved in the first wave - educated middle-class
women, often academics. Such people had access to the work of people like
Friedan and Simone De Beauvoir, sometimes studied in Western Europe or the USA,
sometimes been exiled there. Being, again, often from socialist backgrounds,
they were also open to respect for and cooperation with poor urban or rural
women. Developing this internationalism has been a far from painless process.
But, along the way, Latin American feminism has not only demonstrated a
remarkable pluralism, flexibility and tolerance. It has also earned the respect
of Northern feminists: Latin American feminisms hold lessons for feminists in
industrialised countries. We... could revitalise our own movements if we tapped
the enormous creative energies embodied in our own 'movimientos de mujeres'
(women's movements). The present vitality of Third World feminisms within the
industrialised world is indicative of this potential. Regressive economic
policies and rightwing governments in the 'First World' have also created
conditions ripe for the mobilisation of poor and working-class women and women
of colour... Just as North American or European feminism has provided crucial
insights for the second wave of feminism in Latin America, perhaps now Latin
American feminisms can enrich and inspire our own movements. (Sternbach et, al.
1992: 433-4). This is true in more senses than these authors reveal,
since they concentrate on the Encounters, and then deal with these more as
political than intellectual events. But Latin American feminism (either inside
or outside the Encounters) has also produced theoretical and strategic documents
of considerable originality and potency. These not only contribute to the
enrichment of Northern feminisms. They also reveal an openness to other social
movements, and thus potentially to other internationalisms: We are living in a time, not only in Latin America,
characterised by the simultaneous emergence of new social subjects, multiple
rationalities and identities, expressed in the social movements. This opens up
more individual and collective possibilities for transforming social values. It
also reflects the fact that experiences of oppression and subordination, and the
resistance to them, are expressed in so many different ways that there cannot be
one global explanation which encompasses all social conflicts. The
acknowledgement of these multiple and diverse rationalities refutes the idea of
an emancipatory process that articulates aspirations within one dynamic only and
through an exclusive and privileged axis. (Vargas 1992 a:
196). In what may be the first attempt to conceptualise the Latin
American feminist internationalism, Gina Vargas has sketched both its extent and
limitations (Vargas 1992 b). She distinguishes the various streams, forms,
themes and actors, suggests significant periods and identifies current problems.
The streams are the feminist, the popular and that of women in the
'traditional-formal' spaces (parties, unions, federations). Of these, as
suggested above, it is the feminist one that has been most involved in
internationalism. The forms include networks of many kinds, themselves
organising conferences and campaigns, keeping in touch through magazines,
newsletters or e-mail (c.f. Miller 1992: 217-8, 225-7). Some of these networks
extend across the Southern continents or are concerned with South-North
dialogue. The themes include health and legal services, popular education,
communication itself, and issues such as race, sexual option, ecology, etc. The
actors, apart from the feminist activists, increasingly include women from
different class, racial, party, labour, peasant and youth
organisations.

The two
periods distinguished by Vargas are those of the building and unfolding of the
international movement (1980-87) and that of its expansion and enrichment (1987
on). The first period was marked by a Latin American version of global
sisterhood which initially provided a collective identity but also suppressed
differences. During the second period such differences have found public
expression in the Encounters and other meetings. These differences include
contradictions between and within distinct Latin-American regions (Central
America, the Caribbean, South America). There are political tensions linked to
nations / regions which have not yet been freely discussed: the failure of
Peruvian feminists to take up an imaginative Ecuadorian proposal for
de-nationalising a frontier dispute; the initial difficulties some Central
American feminists had in condemning a Peruvian terrorist movement for
assassinating the best-known popular feminist leader in Lima (they apparently
considered it a revolutionary guerrilla movement of the Central American
type).

The late
arrival of the popular sectors in international relations reveals, or gives rise
to, a series of problems. One is the existing domination of South-North
international relations not simply by middle-class feminists but by those in the
NGOs. These have long had 'a special relation with agencies, governments and
women in the North'. And this relationship has, until recently, been questioned
neither from within the NGOs nor from outside. Another is the patronising of the
popular sectors by the middle-class feminists in Latin America. Yet another is a
possible patronising of them by Northern aid agencies or solidarity
committees: Support from governments and/or women in the North in this
case has some vices: their proposals and demands are fundamentally inspired on
ideological proposals... alien to the feminist proposal, and/or that feminism
itself aims to surpass: populism and Marxism, generally in their less creative
expressions (emphasis laid upon anti-imperialist postures more than on
democratic ones). The relationship of women in the North, in the case of the
[Latin-American] Domestic Workers' Union, has thrived a lot upon the basis of
class (poor women versus petite-bourgeoisie), stemming from a guilty and only
economic-minded solidarity on behalf of women in the North.
(ibid). This need not
always be the case, as is suggested by the activities of Mujer a Mujer/Woman to
Woman. [8] What follows is extracted from a study of international labour computer communications (Waterman 1992: 40-44). Mujer a Mujer (MaM) is a
feminist collective of women from Canada, the US, the Caribbean and Mexico,
based in Mexico City itself. MaM began, around 1984, as an international
solidarity project for women workers and seems to have either avoided or
surpassed the traditional North-to-South aid/solidarity model. With Mexican and
other Latina women growing in numbers in North America, with increasing numbers
of US plants shifting there, and now with the Free Trade Area (FTA) confronting
the peoples of all three (see Cavanagh et. al. 1992, Kamel 'passim', Moody and
McGinn 1992), MaM appears to recognise that solidarity is a multi-directional as
well as a multi-faceted matter.

MaM is
involved with labour, community, women's, communication and computer groups in
Mexico and North America. It was a major mover in the first Trinational Women's
Conference on Free Trade and Economic Integration, held in Mexico, February 5-9,
1992. The activities of MaM reveal, furthermore, that labour networking is 1)
not restricted to trade-union networking, and 2) that it can be a result, or
even an integral part, of the work of a new social movement - in this case a
feminist one.

An
account of the Trinational Women's Conference, by a MaM activist and conference
co-organiser, indicates the way this movement is broadening both beyond
wage-labour and beyond the initial three countries involved: The world is changing so quickly that even as we met the
notion of 'tri-national' links was beginning to appear outdated... Maquilas
[cheap-labour assembly plants] have already taken root in countries like
Guatemala and El Salvador. Our analysis and solidarity must begin to weave new
connections. The focus on women's labour sometimes constrained our insights.
While much path-breaking solidarity has been begun through union and other
networks, we must not limit ourselves to those sectors. In Mexico, women within
the 'urban poor movement' have begun to look at issues of free trade, where it
comes from and how it will change their struggles. They have already identified
the need to develop an international perspective and solidarity links. (Yanz
1992: 8. My stress - PW)
MaM is primarily oriented toward working women, and it
could therefore be understood to be interested only in international solidarity
of or with women as workers. This is evidently not the case, since its
newsletter, 'Correspondencia', shows that it takes up general feminist issues,
such as those of reproductive rights, violence against women, lesbianism, the
position of coloured and indigenous women. Unlike most international labour
networks, this one is also theoretically minded. It presses for a gender
perspective on all issues - such as the FTA. Some of the materials from the
Trinational Conference, indeed, seem to suggest that, whilst the event presented
women's demands, a feminist perspective was not yet sufficiently developed.
Thus, the Canadian report concludes that: For the future, we have more work to do to strengthen our
gender analysis. We need to be linking theory, research, education and action (ibid). MaM also introduces us to new ways of conceiving the 'mass', 'members', 'followers' or 'audience' addressed by the activists (whether
these be workers or women), in so far as value is given to real-life diversity
rather than an abstract unity: The concept of 'masses' gives way to the valuing of the
diversity of unique 'identities'. Each new emerging 'social actor' ('sujeto
historico') claims power in areas of experience damaged or buried by domination.
Women, for example, bring the intimate and domestic worlds into public view and
action. Indigenous peoples confront and offer alternatives to the spread of a
racist and environmentally destructive monoculture. ('Correspondencia', August
1990: 2) Interestingly enough, MaM's activities have even raised
major strategic issues on labour internationalism that have so far remained
little-debated in the male-dominated organisations or fora - of right or left.
At the Trinational Conference there was, thus, discussion on whether or not it
made sense to demand that the Free Trade Area bring about an 'upward
harmonisation' of working conditions and rights, given that it was premised
precisely on the difference in costs, rights and conditions: We all spoke of the need for further research and exchange
of information in order to be able to act strategically in this new world...
There were those who emphasised 'upward harmonisation' as a goal for regional
struggle. Others favoured demands which could be immediately achievable within
the logic of the new system, in order to lay a solid foundation for future
struggle. (Trinational Women's Conference 1992: 14) One does not have to have a specific position here to
recognise the opportunities and dangers opened by both strategies, and therefore
the importance of wide-ranging debate on the issue.

Within
the activities of MaM, and the reflections on its conference, we can see
connections both with Latin American feminist internationalism and with a new
kind of labour internationalism. Within the experience of feminism in and from
Latin America, we can see possible ways forward from the paralysing dichotomies
bequeathed by the traditional politics of protest. This is not to set up Latin
American feminist internationalism as a land promised to jaded or faded
feminisms elsewhere. The only guarantee for its further creative development
would seem to be a rigorous self-reflection (most of the present overviews are
written by outsiders), as well as critical reflection on the good and bad
experiences of Europe, Asia, Africa and North America.

4. The
literatures around internationalism

Despite
the lack of theory on international women's solidarity as such, there does exist
a growing literature around the subject. It is possible to recognise that each
of the books, articles or types of literature makes its individual contribution:
together they would seem to me to provide a basis for more systematic discussion
on feminism and internationalism.

There
follows an attempt to group relevant literature types, followed by a more
extended review.

4.1.
Overview: subjects, actors, areas, debates

There has
been some debate on 'women, feminism and international relations', largely
limited by the parameters of international relations theory and by the failure
to explicitly address the issue of solidarity (Grant and Newland 1991, Halliday
1991, Millenium 1988, Molyneux 1991, Runyon and Peterson 1991). On the other
hand, Cynthia Enloe's book, on 'Making Feminist Sense of International Politics'
(Enloe 1990, reviewed Bourne 1990, Hamilton 1990) starts from feminism, ignores
academic international relations theory and suggests a whole new agenda for
future analysis and struggle. She has chapters on tourism, nationalism, military
bases, diplomacy, bananas, 'blue jeans and bankers' and domestic servants! These
are not the subjects of conventional international relations textbooks of either
right or left. Enloe wants to get away from the notion that women are either
victims, passive, innocent or absent in international relations, revealing
precisely how they are involved, where they are complicit, how they struggle and
what this all implies. Along the way she reveals that 'international relations'
is not a subject but a discourse (pale, male and somewhat frail). One would like
to see her or someone else make its implicit conceptualisation explicit. And to
spell out its implications for effective alternative strategies. There is a
pioneering history of 'women's movements and international organisation', which
(if translated out of Dutch!) could stimulate both debate and historical
research internationally (Reinalda and Verhaaren 1989). This is 500 pages long,
covers 1868 to 1986, pays full attention to the Communist and Third World and is
extremely well organised.

Judging
by its treatment of the contemporary international women's health issue (276-83)
it also shows balance and insight. It has, moreover, a 20-page theoretical
reflection at the end (376-95). This would seem to at least chalk out another
agenda for theoretical discussion in so far as it covers: the women's movement
as social movement, nationally and internationally; women's discontents; women's
ideas on equality; women as subject and object of international relations. It
also attempts to conceptualise the different waves of the international movement
and the various phases of these waves. Despite the bias toward legal norms and
formal organisations, this sketch represents something of a challenge. There are
also regional histories or overviews, such as those on Latin America already
mentioned. Even where the latter might not be primarily concerned with relations
between the sisters internationally, they can provide sources for reflection on
such. There has been much written on 'theoretical debates between academic
feminists', usually on Black/White, First World/Third World differences. Some
such authors seem to confuse or conflate their theoretical concerns with 'the
international women's movement' as such. Bulbeck's book (1988) is a very useful
survey and critique of debates amongst academic feminists internationally
(covering global patriarchy, race and gender, imperialism and development, etc).
It is entitled One World Women's Movement, but it begins by stating: This is not
primarily a book about the position of women across the
globe.

Rather it
is an analysis of the debates between feminists in different cultures... (ix).
The 'different cultures' (not the same as different nation-states) then turn out
to be the now-familiar Northern and Southern, Black and White. However, she does
directly address the question of the possible meaning - or possible future
meaning - of what she, again, specifically calls not an international but a
global feminism (147-54). She offers three possible models of such: 1) a
homogenous movement united against men and patriarchy; 2) one that recognises
the differences implied by race and imperialism but which prioritises the
struggle against male domination; 3) and one that sees it as a constellation of
localised movements, which movements engage now in a struggle for higher wages
for all workers, now in a struggle for freedom from a political regime, now in a
struggle for women's control of reproductive choice, and whose members are
united by only one belief - that there are forms of oppression based on gender
differences and that these must ultimately be addressed if women are to achieve
satisfactory autonomy in society. (148) She favours the third one, recognises
that no feminist has a programme for its realisation, and suggests that this may
be in the nature of an orientation which implies that the movement is
self-creating. Whilst I share this orientation, I would consider attempts to
work out principles, strategies and programmes as a necessary and urgent part of
such a self-creation. There is, I believe, only one book that seriously attempts
to deal with the international women's movement in its ideological,
communication and protest forms, as well as its institutional ones, and that
recognises the multiplicity of its levels, places and spaces. This is by Jessie
Bernard - who wrote it at the age of 84!. It is entitled 'The Female World From
a Global Perspective'. Jessie Bernard's is a Western, liberal, universalising
vision in both negative and positive senses (c.f. endnote 4). Negatively, there
is its 19th century self-satisfaction and optimism about incremental progress,
as also, perhaps, its understanding of the 'female world' descriptively and
uncritically as a sociological entity, a de facto cultural structure - of laws,
customs, mores, traditions, attitudes, beliefs - in which female infants are
born and shaped. (Bernard 1987: viii) It nonetheless provides, in Part 3, the
only existing attempt to overview and evaluate the international feminist
movement, in terms of its meetings, communications and
campaigns.

Moreover,
she recognises the distinction between feminist and women's internationalism -
that she is talking about the international relations of a small elite of women,
who are literate, who are in a position to participate in international
meetings.

Small in
number as they may be, they are important far beyond their number because they
supply the paradigms, the perspectives, the strategies, the policies, the
visions for many less privileged women everywhere. They are by no means
representative samples of their native lands. They probably have more in common
with one another than they do with the non-literate women of their homelands. A
woman judge from the United States, that is, is probably on more nearly the same
wavelength as that of an African woman judge than that of a Chicana agricultural
worker in the US Southwest. And the African judge, similarly, is probably more
nearly like her US counterpart than she is like women in the bush at home. (125)
Bernard does not assume that the 'Feminist Enlightenment' (Chapter 6) will
necessarily 'result in global female solidarity' (xi). But it seems to me that
her four Cs (conferences, communications, campaigns and culture) provide a
useful framework for further investigation of, and discussion on, the subject.
One would, again, like to see socialist, radical or ecofeminist treatments of
the same areas of activity. Another way of thinking about the women's movement
globally is in terms of where it is 'moving to'. Asoka Bandarage (1991) has
written a pioneering essay 'In Search of a New World Order'. This relates to an
increasing body of alternative world order literature by other feminists
(Henderson 1983, Mische 1978). Bandarage attempts to synthesise socialist,
feminist, ecological and spiritual criticism of our current world order. She
also seeks to synthesise modern technology with ancient wisdom. But her way (or
Way?) is primarily spiritual, both in content and tone: it represents an appeal
to a latent sense of ethical responsibility and offers a new global ethic.
Perhaps one has to be a spiritual person to respond to this kind of writing! A
‘non-spiritual' and problem-raising note on feminism and international
ecological movements is that of Ewa Charkiewicz-Pluta (1992). A hard-edged work,
with less global address, but also combining feminism, socialism, ecology and
spiritualism is that of Mary Mellor (1992). Given the existence of such work, we
can be sure that Bandarage has opened a vein which is likely to be energetically
worked in coming years. Despite the crucial role of 'feminist academics in
international networking' and in promoting women's internationalism more
generally, little has been written directly about this.

Rosi
Braidotti (1990, 1991, 1992) has produced some reflections on feminist academic
internationalism in relation to the European Community. This is refreshing
precisely because it has no interest in rehashing the theoretical debates. She
recognises the traditional role of scholars in the creation of international
webs of a 'high culture' at a time in when this is being undermined by a
commercialised and universalised 'low' culture. She raises various questions
about the role feminist academics might play in relationship to MacDonaldisation
and Benetonisation. Rejecting high-culture nostalgia in face of the new media,
she asks: why not market in a more convincing manner the products of 'high'
culture: Why not use these technological tools to make 'high' culture into a
worldwide phenomenon? Why can the university standards of knowledge not be used
as guidelines for the future? Why should Madonna (the contemporary version
thereof) be the heroine of our times; why not Simone de Beauvoir, Alexandra
Kollontai, Rosa Luxemburg? (Braidotti 1990:115) Various, extensive, challenging
answers to such questions are being offered by those interested in the
democratisation of international culture and communication (Frederick 1992,
Tehranian 1990, Waterman 1992). Braidotti also reflects on the
possibility/necessity of feminist scholars acting effectively as world citizens.
She plays here with the concepts of the Exile, the Nomad and the Migrant in the
development of international feminism. Such concepts, as she recognises, are
more than metaphors. The problem with Braidotti's piece is not so much that she
plays with concepts but also with roles, in this one short piece adopting the
pose or voice (or standpoint?) of Cosmopolitan Academic as well as Pop-Culture
Pundit, of Academic Feminist as well as Feminist Academic. One nonetheless hopes
her thoughts will be developed - and that they might serve as a model or
stimulus for writing about other international feminist; subjects or actors.
There is a growing feminist literature on 'coalition and alliance' which, even
where not directly addressed to it, is of evident relevance to the development
of global solidarity movements. This literature has emerged as a reaction
against a theory and politics of 'difference' that often ends up in not so much
recognising as essentialising and fetishing such (Mohanty 1992, Walby 1992,
Yuval-Davis 1992 a,b). I will consider the argument of Alperin (1990). Alperin
identifies three political models of diversity and consequent strategies of
alliance: 1) the pluralist, or contemporary liberal one, implying the
assimilation or coexistence of different interests or communities without social
transformation; 2) the separatist one, of various Marxist, feminist and ethnic
or nationalist movements, implying one primary structural repression, or source
of all such, the ending of which provides the key to emancipation); 3) the
interactive model, recognising: a) that there are multiple oppressions; b) that
no single form can be considered a-priori determinant; c) that the oppressions
interact in complex ways so as to reinforce one another; d) that the elimination
of one oppression - even if considered determinant - would not necessarily
eliminate the others. Each of these positions has implications for alliance.
Alperin holds to the interactive position, which she sees as implying the
following strategic principles: 1) the necessity for separate spaces and
consciousness-raising (as the separatists propose); 2) an understanding of and
action against other oppressions (that may otherwise be reproduced within, or
accepted by, the particular group); 3) an understanding of and action on the
interaction of specific oppressions in specific historical situations, in
relationship to specific groups. Given, Alperin argues, the interlocking of
different oppressions, alliances are necessary for mutual comprehension and
effective struggle.

Moreover,
in so far as theory cannot be divorced from practical activity, such alliances
are necessary for a fuller and more liberating comprehension of society. It
seems to me that Alperin's perspective is relevant to an understanding of
relations both between and within the new internationalisms. An interactive
model and strategy could, in fact, apply at every level or scale. Thus, it could
be applied to 1) middle-class feminist internationalism on reproductive
technologies, 2) relations between middleclass and poor women within this, 3)
relations between this particular and other feminist international isms, 4)
between feminist and non-feminist internationalisms.

What follows is extracted from a
book review, later incorporated into a long review article (Waterman 1989). It
is now time to pass from notes to some more substantial reflections. The longer
review below offers, firstly, a full expression of certain issues and arguments
presented briefly above, and, secondly, evidence of how feminists address (or
fail to address) themselves both to labour internationalism and to
internationalism more generally.[10] Sylvia Walby (1992) has also jointly reviewed Mitter and
Mies, recognising other strengths and limitations of these
works.

1. Women
workers of some lands, unite!

Swasti
Mitter's book is on women in the changing global economy (Mitter 1986, reviewed
Elson 1988). It is more of an analytical than a theoretical work, being clearly
oriented to political action, and ending with a list of relevant women's
networks in Europe. The book is concerned with the changing structure of
employment worldwide, with the creation of a sub-proletariat of women workers,
with the implications of this both in the Third World and in the First, and with
the inter-relationships of class, gender and race in this whole new process. The
last chapter is entitled 'Women Working Worldwide' (the name of a British-based
solidarity group, see Shaw 1991). It summarises the argument of the book, shows
how women wage-earners are responding to the situation organisationally, and
considers possible strategies that could favour them. I will comment on this
last chapter.

Stressing
the implications of and for gender and race structures internationally, Mitter's
analysis shows us a radically transformed working class, or a radically
transformed image of the working class. Identifying with the casualised female,
black and Third-World workers, she argues that these are increasingly fording
themselves and each other internationally, and surpassing the limitations of a
union movement dominated by males and whites. Her critical discussion of
'alternative left' strategies in Britain and Europe ends with an insistence on
the contribution to be made by the women and black workers at the
grassroots.

We have
here, in other words, a socialist-feminist view on labour internationally and on
labour internationalism. Even if one accepts, however, the notion of a polarised
working class and the increasing importance of the peripheral workers, and
agrees on the necessity of their specific internationalism, the evidence and
interpretation of international organisation and strategy is thin and
unconvincing. What it amounts to are some pathbreaking conferences and useful
information networks, some critically-examined First-World strategies and some
uncritically-praised Third-World models. The limited space devoted by the book
to organisation and action itself restricts the attention given to
internationalism. Nor is any relationship shown to either labour
internationalism or women's internationalism more generally. Nor does Mitter's
model allow for the (then-existing) Communist world, the existence of which
might complicate her set of binary oppositions (male/female, core
workers/peripheral workers, white/black, First World/Third World). What we do
nonetheless see is a distinct subject and area of labour and women's
internationalism, an implicit challenge to both of these to allow for this, an
implicit requirement that this internationalism be examined more closely and
theorised more rigorously.

2.
Middle-class feminists of some lands, unite!

Maria
Mies' book is also on women in the new international division of labour (Mies
1986, reviewed Judd 1989). It is a wide-ranging work of some theoretical
complexity and originality. It conceptualises and analyses the contemporary
world as shaped by 'capitalist patriarchy'. And it ends with a chapter entitled
'Towards a Feminist Perspective of a New Society' (205-35). Given the nature of
the work, as well as the greater proportion of space allowed for consideration
of strategy, it is interesting to see how this chapter compares with Mitter's.
Mies refers to the international feminist movement as a 'truly anarchic-,' one
(210). Her own contribution to its discussions seems itself to draw less from
any post-Marxian socialism than from an anti-industrial anarchist or socialist
utopianism, finding contemporary expression in the ecological
movement.

Even
those unable to accept Mies' particular paradigm of the world as solely or
simply capitalist-patriarchal are likely to find her metaphor of colonising
divisions (man/woman, human/nature, rationality/emotionality, white/black, etc.)
powerful (210). As, also, her counter-principles, rejecting such destructive
oppositions and proposing relations of equality, reciprocity, collectivity,
autonomy and of the production of life as the purpose of life (218). She seems
to me here to not only specify aspects of a new internationalism but to extend
these back, down and in - to the national, inter-personal and personality level.
The specification, further, of body-politics and consumption relations as
priorities for internationalist activity significantly extends the traditional
range and understanding of internationalism (227-8). Body-politics specifies the
human-rights struggle in a form significant to women. A 'consumer liberation
movement' gives a cutting edge to an existing consumer movement that often
compromises with modernising capital or sophisticated state
bureaucracies.

The most
provocative and problematic of Mies' ideas is that of a middle-class feminist
internationalism. Although I have myself elsewhere suggested that contemporary
internationalism is largely a middle-class phenomenon, and that wage-earner
internationalism is often initiated or articulated by academics and
professionals (Waterman 1988), this is the first time I have found someone
prepared to come out of the closet as a middle-class internationalist! Or does
she? The attitudes, interests and demands are expressed as general, if not
universal ones, are given priority, and are even presented as determinant for
the Northern end of the North-South solidarity relationship.

This
leads on to the question of the role of workers, or peasants - or, for that
matter, prostitutes - in international solidarity activity. It seems to me that
Mies' dismissal of the possibility of solidarity between workers North and South
is actually dependent on orthodox Marxist categories and attitudes, if not
arguments. She characterises this as the 'sphere of economics or economic
struggles', which she sees as 'almost fully controlled by the international and
sexual division of labour' (232). She says there is here no material base for
solidarity. She does not even address her Western middle-class consumer's
solidarity to Southern women factory workers, since the two are related
internationally in a 'contradictory, even antagonistic way' (232). It seems to
me that this argument accepts a capitalist concept of workers - sees workers as
defined by and for capital. Only in liberal thought, surely, is the relationship
between workers internationally seen as a zero-sum game in which higher wages
for workers there mean a loss for workers/consumers here. And even if there are
real difficulties in creating solidarity on wages/jobs issues (which,
incidentally, are political issues), it is difficult to argue that improved
women worker rights – including body-politics ones - there are at the expense of
those here. It should, finally, be pointed out that whilst her argument against
the possibility of women wage-worker internationalism is based on 'material'
obstacles, her argument for the possibility of a consumer-producer
internationalism is based on a somewhat iffy transcendence of
such: if women are -'ready to transcend' the boundaries set by
the international and sexual division of labour... if they accept the principles
of a self-sufficient, more or less autarchic, economy; if they are ready... to
replace export-oriented production by production for the needs of the people,
then it will be possible to combine women's struggles at both ends of the
globe... (232-3. Original emphasis) What of the peasants? The international relation she
proposes is between a 'feminist-led' consumer liberation movement in the North
and a 'women's' production liberation movement in the South. Without dismissing
the possible value of such a relationship, it is clearly one of un-equals and
un-alikes: on the one hand Northern / feminist / middle-class / consumers and on
the other Southern / women / peasant / producers. And what of prostitutes? The
examples of solidarity mentioned by Mies are either between Western and Southern
middle-class feminists or between Western feminists and Southern 'working-class'
prostitutes. Both types of action are original, necessary and admirable. But
should not the aim be autonomous international solidarity between the
prostitutes (c.f. Pheterson 1989 a, b, c)?

Mies'
attitude towards technology (see also Roth and Mies 1983, Mies 1989),
furthermore, is one that seems to me hard to sustain either in logic or in
political action and personal behaviour: Computer technology... is destroying all productive human
powers, all understanding of nature and, in particular, all capacity for sensual
enjoyment. (218) Faced with the horrors of such new technologies in the
hands of greedy, shortsighted and vicious men, the recourse to either anathema
or Luddism is comprehensible. The problem, surely however, is not technology
but, technocracy, the latter signifying both a social elite and an ideology.
Without modern capitalist technology Mies would probably have never been in
India. And the international women's networking she wishes to further could
hardly exist. Electronic technology makes it possible (not necessary) for
creative intellectual workers, such as she and me, to do our own household tasks
without household servants or housewives, our own typing, proofreading, even
printing and publishing, without consigning these manual tasks to a caste of
routine workers. Mies' attitude here can be contrasted with that of philosopher
Donna Haraway (1991) and novelist Marge Piercy (1980, 1991). Marge Piercy's
feminist utopian novel (1981) combines electronics and genetic engineering
(babies can be born in laboratories, men can choose to breast-feed) with Mies'
own direct relationship to nature and each other. International struggles over
the new technology, internationalist uses of the new technology, are ones the
international women's movement is already fruitfully engaged in (Capek 1990,
Cruz 1989, Kassel and Kaufman 1990). A final problem is with the limited area of
Mies' internationalism. This runs only on the North-South axis. Although Mies
makes frequent reference to, and powerful criticism of, the (then) Communist
world, it is not theorised nor addressed politically/strategically. Hers is,
like that of Mitter, another imperialism-fixated worldview.

I began this discussion by
tentatively relating the feminism of Mies to anti-industrial anarchist
utopianism. We could now add that it is also explicitly middle-class and
Western. Again, this is a characterisation, not a castigation. Perhaps, as Mies
implies for the international feminist movement, we need all these class,
national, group, gender and ideological internationalisms before we can see what
internationalism is. Perhaps we also require what Mies attempts to offer - a
model of a future society based on a surpassing of the principles dominating
present ones - to guide our present internationalist activities beyond urgent
but short-term and often defensive needs. Speaking from such a position, in any
case, she is able to see and say things about internationalism that have not
been said before. If one feels that Mies over-generalises or universalises from
this position, we are still confronted with the problem of how a worker,
women's, prostitutes' or peasants' internationalism could be articulated without
paternalistic rhetoric or charity. Or its maternalistic equivalent, for that
matter.[11]

Maria
Mies seems not to have changed her position since writing that book. I believe
that the dichotomies are to a large extent reproduced in her paper to an
international woman and health conference, held in Bangladesh (Mies 1989). Here
she sees international differences/divisions between women 'precisely expressed'
in terms of 'metropoles and colonies' (34). In her view of international
relations between women, the 'contradictory or even antagonistic relations' are
apparently between poor women in the South and middle-class women in the North
(36). Whilst she recognises Northern women as being manipulated and exploited by
the same 'techno-patriarchal' and capitalist forces as those in the South, she
considers that those in the North 'both well-to-do ones and also poorer ones',
profit from 'the loot accumulated by white man'. She criticises the
individualistic and technocratic attitudes to reproductive technologies
predominant amongst Northern women, claiming that the 'other complete
perspective is provided to us by the poor women in the South' (37). Mies
believes that unity can nonetheless be forged by the joint struggles of North
and South, city and countryside, middle and working class, and that it should be
a reciprocal one, going from North to South and vice-versa. This appears, in
sum, to be a largely Manichean world, in which contradictions are also
structural and cumulative. It is for this reason, surely, that the 'complete
perspective' is provided by the poor women in the South (accumulating the
maximum negativity?). It seems to me that there may here also be a reproduction
of the logic of traditional socialist and/or Thirdworldist internationalism,
including a totalising contradiction (metropole/periphery), a privileged
revolutionary subject (poor/Third World/women), a primary socio-geographical
axis (North/South), plus revolutionary intellectuals (the enlightened
middle-class women of North and South), representing the longterm interests of
the masses concerned.

Another
traditional element is the combination of economic determinism with political
voluntarism. There are other problems. The international reciprocity proposed by
Mies is, presumably between the enlightened middleclass women, since
self-activity (nationally or internationally) of the poor women concerned is
nowhere reported or proposed. However, Mies also fails to deal even implicitly
with the structural position or the political role of these Southern
middle-class women.

3. All
women of all lands, unite?

In
comparing these two pieces we have to first deal with the most obvious
difference, that between a socialist-feminist working-class internationalism and
an anarchist/ecofeminist middle-class one. Although Mitter makes no reference to
Mies-type positions in her chapter, it is clear where she thinks priority should
be placed, where the main libratory agent is to be found. And whilst Mies makes
passing reference to wage-worker or union action, she is quite explicit in
prioritising the middle class. We would seem to have to choose between Position
A, Position B, Position A + B or, of course, Position X. It would be in the
spirit of letting 100 internationalisms bloom to opt for A + B + (any future
hypothetical) X. But one needs here a more specific and principled reason for
one's option. My argument would begin, I think, with a rejection of the
'classism' explicit or implicit in both items. Mitter's women workers are
evidently only partially or temporarily proletarianised. They also have been,
are, or will be, petty-commodity producers and housewives. Mies' middle-class
women are, presumably, to a considerable extent wage-dependent either through
their own wages or those of male family. 'Middle class' and 'working class' may,
in any case, it seems to me, be taken to represent not so much existing social
categories as the competing claims for social hegemony of the bourgeoisie and
proletariat respectively. In so far as we are concerned to surpass both
capitalism and proletarianisation (also post-capitalist), a transformatory
project needs to surpass these categories. The women of Mitter and Mies are all
- differentially - involved in contradictions concerning body-politics,
commodity production and consumption - not to mention others. The creation of a
transformatory force surely requires both the separate and joint struggles of
both categories. In and beyond 'their' class. Nationally and
internationally.

The logical similarity between the
apparently opposed positions does not end here. Both are opposed, explicitly or
implicitly, to the White Male Northern Worker and his Hierarchical,
Bureaucratic, Sexist, Racist Union. In so far as they are here visualising not a
project, tendency or ideology, but permanent social categories and institutions,
they are echoing labour aristocracy theory. Crudely (but it is a crude theory)
this is the idea that rich, secure workers are conservative, pro-capitalist,
pro-imperialist workers. The argument cannot be empirically substantiated. But
it doesn't need to be since it has another function - that of conceptual foil in
the presentation of the really oppressed/exploited, those who are - and are
therefore - really revolutionary (at least potentially). That the most oppressed
or exploited are the most revolutionary cannot be substantiated either: they are
customarily passive, sometimes actively reactionary, and in progressive
movements often volatile and without the social psychology or technical skills
necessary to sustain alternatives. It seems to me to follow that whilst the
autonomous organisation and action of women is essential, this is opposed to
hierarchy, sexism, racism, bureaucracy, etc., to their primary sources and
promoters (capital, state, patriarchy) not to the more-privileged categories of
the oppressed and exploited.[12]

Underlying this problem is a deeper one. It has to do with
dichotomic oppositions more generally. These appear in Mitter as opposition
between male and female, core and peripheral workers, organised and unorganised,
white and black, First and Third Worlds. In Mies they appear in terms of
'colonising oppositions', against which she offers as antidote a holistic view
of the world, nature and self. It seems to me that if one wants to surpass these
in political action one must surpass them also in thought. Mies does not do this
consistently. Sometimes she only reverses the dichotomy, as with her rhetorical
symbol of the White Man. The problem is that this is not
solitaire: it is more like hide-and-seek, a game everyone can play,
and in which the seeker herself can be sought - and caught. Mies must have had the experience of being opposed and
condemned by Black Third-World Leninist Women as a White European Bourgeois
Imperialist Feminist. So we need a holistic logic to understand a holistic world
and to create a holistic society (Hartsock 1987, Harding 'passim'). I think such
a view would allow us to understand that new technology is both this 'and' that,
and that we need to combine Mies' visible communal autarchy with the
mutually-beneficial international trade relationships sought by
Mitter.

Finally,
I would like to return to the 'middle-class' feminist internationalism of Maria
Mies. As someone who, like Mitter, has been primarily concerned with what should
properly be called 'internationalism for workers', I feel that it is now more
than time that we spoke for ourselves and not in the name of others.
Contemporary internationalism, including wage-worker internationalism, is
largely the affair of professionals, academics and organisers. We would
certainly further internationalism if, when relating to those we are trying to
persuade or assist, we made this explicit. In attempting to create a new kind of
internationalism it is essential that we speak in our own voice, and that in
this voice we dialogue with others.

5.
Research needs

The
development of an understanding of women and internationalism cannot consist solely of
critique. It also requires a programme of activity.

5.1.
Tools, compasses and softer devices

We would
still, for example, seem to need a number of quite basic intellectual tools or
compasses. These could be provided quite rapidly if the will was present. They
include c 'comprehensive bibliographies' (c.f. Brown, Grant and Long 1988,
Dickstein 1991), so that we know what books, or articles are available. We also
need to know the major sources - such as those of individuals, organisations,
social ' history and women's archives. And we then need extended, literature
reviews - as distinguished from bibliographical notes like those above. I have
myself got a couple of hundred items of bibliography relevant to women, feminism
and internationalism on my personal! bibliographical database. See the
introduction to the bibliography below.

There is
an evident need for 'historical research', though Reinalda and Verhaaren
provides us with an impressive` overview of the institutional terrain (see also
Cooper 1987,' Horwitz 1977, Kaplan 1985 or 1988, Kopp 1930, Schroder 1983,
Shulman 1983, Walker 1977). The techniques now commonplace in feminist
historical work could be fruitfully employed here. Oral histories need to be
produced before another generation of veterans passes away. We need to identify
and reflect on the biographies and autobiographies of past female
internationalists, whether feminist or not (e.g. Peggy Dennis 1977, Dijkstra
1992 on Flora Tristan, Ettinger 1987 on Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman 1977,
Mackinnon and Mackinnon 1988 on Agnes Smedley, reviewed Seldon 1988). And we
need to encourage the contemporary feminist internationalists to write their own
autobiographies: there is much to be learned from these, and biographies
communicate to non-specialists in a manner that social-scientific writing cannot
even aspire to (for a sketch see Bunch 1987 a).

There is
an obvious need for extensive 'contemporary research', examining, for example,
the areas or cases mentioned in passing by Mitter and Mies, or dealt with more
extensively by Enloe. Research here can, of course, use the techniques of
participant observation or action research. All international organisations,
projects and campaigns need a systematic research dimension, however modest. If
self-reflexivity is an essential characteristic of modernity (Giddens 1990),
then this has not yet been recognised amongst the feminist
internationalists.

There is
a major and urgent need for 'theoretical work', at different levels of
sophistication and generality. We need to distinguish here between concepts,
conceptualisations and theory. But in many cases, even the concepts or
conceptualisations developed in other areas (or at other levels) of feminist,
socialist or critical social science could be fruitfully employed. See, for
example the recognition of multiple identities and sites of struggle in Chhachhi
and Pittin (1991). See also the distinction/relation between traditional,
feminist and popular 'spaces' in Vargas (1991 a). This notion could certainly be
developed, and applied at the global level, by taking account of the discussion
of time, place and space in the work of Chhachhi and Pittin, as well as of David
Harvey (1989: Part 3) or Giddens (1990). The well-developed feminist
epistemological debates on 'standpoint', 'difference' and 'alliance' (e.g.
Harding 'passim') could certainly contribute to theory on international
solidarity.

A
particular feminism that has been particularly active internationally, despite
repression and discrimination, is that of 'lesbians', often together with gays
(Altman 1990, Borren 1992, Reinalda and Verhaaren 1989:283-5, Verhagen 1988).
One recent pamphlet (Anderson 1991) not only lists the national and
international organisations (such as the International Lesbian and Gay
Association and the International Lesbian Information Service) but mentions the
effectivity of international support work, reports on means of networking
(including the electronic), and advises on how to go about
this.

We need
theoretically-informed studies of forms of 'communication' amongst women
internationally. Existing ones tend to be short reports on experiences that do
not necessarily reveal how international women's or feminist communication does
or should differ from that of - say - socialists (Anand 1990, Bernard 1987,
Capek 1990, Cottingham 1990, Corral 1988, Isis International 1988, 1990 b, Karl
1980, Kassell and Kaufman 1990, Mujer a Mujer 1992, Roach 1991, Rush and Allen
1990, Santa Cruz 1990).

There are
increasing studies on the position of and solidarity with (or between) 'women
workers', waged or unwaged (Committee for Asian Women 1989, Chapkis and Enloe
1983, Elson 1986, 1991, Grune 1989, Kamel 'passim', Shaw 1991). But these,
again, are not theoretically informed, and there does not even seem to be much
progress in strategic thinking here. It is yet another of those ironies of
history, of which people of the Marxist tradition are so fond, that theoretical
and strategic reflection on solidarity amongst workers is much developed than
that on women - workers or not (Brecher and Costello 1991 a, b, South African
Labour Bulletin 1991, Waterman 1991 a). One of the few extensive studies on
solidarity between and with working women is that on those in the sex industry
(Pheterson 1989 a, b, c, c.f. Bunch 1987 b: 306-20), this raising many issues of
more general significance than the highly specific case might
suggest.

5.3.
Declarations of strategy, forms of organisation

There is
a need for continuing discussion of global feminist strategy and appropriate
forms of organisation. General statements on alliances, coalitions and
networking are hardly sufficient unless they are related to historical and
contemporary experience, or spelled out in the form of proposals. The concept of
'networking', for example, needs to be defined in communication and/or political
terms (see, respectively, Mulgan 1991, Diani 1992). We then need to examine the
forms actually tried or taken by international feminist initiatives. An
interesting case to examine would be the - presumably unsuccessful - 1977
project for a 'Feminist International', which suggests both roots in socialist
tradition and strivings for an alternative form (Quest 1978 b). A new
declaration or discussion document could greatly stimulate both political and
theoretical reflection. This would be a document that proposed principles for
international solidarity relations with or between women. It could draw on
historical and contemporary experience, both negative and positive. And it could
be concerned with surpassing present shortcomings or obstacles. A 'negative'
model for such a policy-relevant declaration is provided by the critique of
myths about women and politics in Latin America (Catalyst 1991: 14-15, CIDHAL
Noticias 1988). More positive ones, at least on the regional level, also exist
(First Women's Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe 1990, Isis
International 1990 a, Mujer/Fempress 1991, South Asian Feminist Declaration
1991). So does one specifically on the reproductive technologies
(FINRRAGE-UBINIG 1989).

We will
return to these below.

5.4.
Popularisation and mobilisation

The need
for theory must be balanced off against the necessity for work accessible to the
activists and the internationally aware but inactive wo(man). Much feminist
theoretical work (like its patriarchal predecessor - or model?), does not so
much theorise as academise major moral and political issues, thus alienating
them from the activists (not to speak of the mass). Alternative models for
studies of internationalism are provided by the work of Enloe (1990) and that of
Saunders (1989). Enloe's work succeeds by its address to daily and domestic
life, past and present: it reads like a novel. Saunders' narrative work on
international support for the British miners' strike of 19845 manages to provide
us with a thumbnail history of national and international labour movements as it
moves from country to country. Kamel's work (1990 a) provides another model,
coming from the international women's movement but being addressed to
international solidarity more generally, and taking the form of an attractive
and practical organisers' handbook.

6.
Conclusion: from women's internationalism to global
solidarity

The
recognition of international solidarity as a specific and fundamental area for
feminist research and strategy would make its own contribution to the
development of theory and activity on the new internationalism more generally. A
number of the mentioned male-authored works on globalisation, and even on
struggles for alternatives to such, make only passing or token reference to
gender, women's struggles and feminist theory (Giddens 1990, Harvey 1989, Held
1991, Sklair 1991). A feminist critique and alternative is clearly called for
here. In so far, in other words, as we recognise that there is no single primary
subject of such solidarity, and in so far as we further recognise that it has no
predetermined goal or end, we can only know what a new internationalism is as
each possible area is explored and each possible subject of internationalism
speaks. What would seem to be needed is a gender-sensitive theory which would
identify what is specific to that of women and then relate it to the
internationalism of people and peoples more generally.

However,
we are confronted with the paradox that a new social movement so active
internationally and so internationalist, seems so little aware of this. And that
feminist theorists, so busy and productive in so many other areas, should have
so little to say here.

I also
suggested at the beginning, however, and have indicated elsewhere, that this may
be because this movement is less interested in relations between nations! than
in global problems. The words 'global' and 'global solidarity' do recur in these
pages. And where international or inter-regional documents are produced, they
tend to deal with common global or regional problems. Moreover, they tend to
'cross borders' in their analysis and demands, whether these borders are those
of gender, race, class, or a territorial understanding of the region or
world.

Thus the
earlier-mentioned European document raises little' question of relations between
states, nations or, nationalities within the CSE but declares
that: No European state accords equal rights to all people within
its borders and that the structure of our society is dictated by the inequality
which exists between men and women, natives and aliens, dominant cultures and
ethnic groups and between the rich and the poor. (First Women's Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe 1990). It then addresses itself to the problems of 'all people
over and above the nations and borders of the CSCE states'. The South Asian
document states that: Who we are today is as much a product of a common heritage
of the legacy of colonialism and the struggle of earlier generations to create a
just and equal society. In the post-independence period we share common
structure[s] of oppression and exploitation imposed by dominant class/caste and
patriarchal rule, reinforced by almost identical government responses to the
legitimate aspirations of people. (South Asian Feminist Declaration
1991). Whilst evidently recognising the way in which state.
nationalism, ethnic or religious chauvinism I fundamentalism, and militarism
divide the peoples of the region, it proposes a broad common orientation, as
well as a linkage of the women's movement with others. The Declaration of
Comilla, on reproductive technology, clearly recognises a 'patriarchal,
industrial, commercial and racist domination over life' as a global problem,
facing women of all countries, classes and ethnic groups, although with
evidently differential (and divisory) implications and effects. It just as
evidently proposes a global response, appealing to men as well as to
women: We appeal to all women and men to unite globally against
dehumanising technologies and express our solidarity with all those who seek to
uphold and preserve the diversity of life on our planet and the integrity and
dignity of all women. (FINRRAGE-UBINIG 1989). It seems, in other words, as if the lack of a feminist
focus on internationalism could also be understood as a shift of gaze toward a
broader horizon. That horizon will have to be explored in the final chapter of
the work from which this paper is extracted. In the meantime we would do well to
ponder the tragic life of Rosa Luxemburg, an outstanding representative of
classical labour and socialist internationalism. In a work otherwise thoroughly
sceptical of revolutionary utopianism, James Billington (1980 a, b) reveals a
soft spot for the internationalism of Luxemburg. Writing before the collapse of
Communism, he says that if the revolutionary faith does revive in those lands where Rosa Luxemburg lived and died,
it seems likely to be moved by her ghost stalking the stalags of Stalinism and
the dachas of its directors. To them, she can speak of forgotten dreams -
reminding them that a Jewish woman once argued that Poles should unite with
Russians for their common good; that Germans would benefit from revolution in
Russia; and that social revolution would directly abolish both the national
identities and the authoritarian controls that repress the creativity of working
people themselves. (Billington 1980 b: 503). Yet it is my impression, from a recent biography, that
Luxemburg's internationalism went alongside a denial of her identity as Jew,
Pole, Woman and, in some way, Person. Concluding on her unhappy relationship
with both her lovers, Elzbieta Ettinger says: Capable of effecting change in the consciousness of the
workers, she believed she could also change an unhappy man into a happy one. The
difference between the amorphous crowds she so easily swayed and the individual
escaped her. So did the distinctions inherent in divergent cultures and social
conditions; she saw humanity but not the individual human being. 'Contact with
the masses gives me inner courage and tranquillity', she said, but [her lovers]
Jogiches or Zetkin seldom evoked these sensations. With them she felt unloved,
unappreciated, and unneeded, or at best was constantly afraid of not being
loved, appreciated, or needed. Lonely and sick at heart, she increasingly sought
in humanity the wholeness and security that her parental home and her lovers had
failed to give her. (Ettinger 1987: 160). Rosa’s internationalism was, in other words, an alternative
to identities she could not recognise, or with which she could not come to
terms. Many contemporary feminisms argue for the necessity of joining together
such divided and denied identities. And many contemporary international
feminisms are suggesting a shift of paradigm away from the impossible past of
internationalism' (which is why, for Rosa, it could only be a dream) and toward
a global solidarity to be built day by day in our waking hours.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Previous versions of the chapter have been published in Spanish (Waterman 1992) and English (Waterman 1993). The second of these
provides an overview of a wide variety of literature and an extensive
bibliography.

[2] Considering the second wave of the feminist movement in Latin America, Francesca
Miller (1992:192) supports the first of these arguments, but also reveals how
even authoritarian regimes have allowed space for the development of feminist
movements.

[3] It
is, again, Francesca Miller who reveals the intimate interconnections of both
waves of Latin-American feminism to much broader political issues. This is true
of the predominantly liberal feminism of the earlier period and the
predominantly socialist one of the present (Miller 1990,
1992).

[4] This is precisely identified and convincingly criticised in
the process of a friendly review of the Morgan anthology by Chandra Mohanty (1992: 83-4). She says: Universal sisterhood, defined as the transcendence of the
'male' world... ends up being a middle-class, psychologised notion which
effectively erases material and ideological power differences within and among
groups of women, especially between First and Third World (and, paradoxically,
removes us all as actors from history and politics). It is in this erasure of
difference as inequality and dependence that the privilege of Morgan's political
location' (in New York City) might be visible. Ultimately in this reductive
utopian vision, men participate in politics while women can only hope to
transcend them. It should additionally be pointed out that Morgan's claim
to present an anthology on "The International Women's Movement" is actually a
collection on national women's movements, with little reference to any
international organisations, activities or ideas - apart from an item on women
in the UN (Hedevary 1985) and her own asserted transcendental
ethic.

[5] One
exception to the rule is the chapter on the period 1974-90 of Miller (1992),
which includes ‘international feminism’ in its title. Another is the conference
report and reflections of Keysers and Smith (1991). Both will be returned to
below.

[6] According to Renalda and Verharren (1989: 103), this was not an international
but a Latin-American congress, although it was attended by women from five
European countries and the United States.

[7] Does Miller overstate her case? The account of Reinalda and Verhaaren (1989:
103-8) is somewhat more nuanced or complex, since it reveals the rather active
role of the inter-state bodies, and certain individual male diplomats, to
forward women’s issues. This account also gives more space to the energetic
pioneering activities of the US women’s movements.

[8] What follows is extracted from a study of international labour computer communications (Waterman 1992: 40-44).

[10] Sylvia Walby (1992) has also jointly reviewed Mitter and Mies, recognising other strengths and limitations of these works.

[11] I believe that the dichotomies are to a large extent
reproduced in the paper of Mies (1989) to a previously mentioned international
woman and health conference, held in Bangladesh. Here she sees international
differences/divisions between women 'precisely expressed' in terms of
'metropoles and colonies' (34). In her view of international relations between
women, the 'contradictory or even antagonistic relations' are apparently between
poor women in the South and middle-class women in the North (36). Whilst she
recognises Northern women as being manipulated and exploited by the same
'techno-patriarchal' and capitalist forces as those in the South, she considers
that those in the North both well-to-do ones and also poorer ones', profit from
'the loot accumulated by white man'. She criticises the individualistic and
technocratic attitudes to reproductive technologies predominant amongst Northern
women, claiming that the 'other complete perspective is provided to us by the
poor women in the South' (37). Mies believes that unity can nonetheless be
forged by the joint struggles of North and South, city and countryside, middle
and working-class, and that it should be a reciprocal one, going from North to
South and vice-versa. This appears, in sum, to be a largely Manichean world, in
which contradictions are also structural and cumulative. It is for this reason,
surely, that the 'complete perspective' is provided by the poor women in the
South (accumulating the maximum negativity?). It seems to me that there may here
also be a reproduction of the logic of traditional socialist and/or
Thirdworldist internationalism, including a totalising contradiction (metropole
/ periphery), a privileged revolutionary subject (poor/Third World/Women), a
primary socio-geographical axis (North/South), plus revolutionary intellectuals
(the enlightened middle-class women of North and South), representing the
long-term interests of the masses concerned. Another traditional element is the
combination of economic determinism with political voluntarism. There are other
problems. The international reciprocity proposed by Mies is, presumably between
the enlightened middle-class women, since self-activity (nationally or
internationally) of the poor women concerned is nowhere reported or proposed.
However, Mies also fails to deal even implicitly with the structural position or
the political role of these Southern middle-class women. Mies, however continues
to innovate in proposing global alternatives, as in a paper proposing a 'new
moral economy' to replace a world capitalist one that is increasingly divisory,
destructive and repressive (Mies 1983).

[12] Underlying this problem is a deeper one. It has to do with dichotomic opposition
more generally. These appear in Mitter as opposition between male and female,
core and peripheral workers, organised and unorganised, white and black, First
and Third worlds. In Mies they appear in terms of ‘colonising oppositions’,
against which she offers as antidote a holistic view of the world, nature and
self. It seems to me that if one wants to surpass these in political action one
must surpass them also in thought. Mies does not do this consistently. Sometimes
she only reverses the dichotomy, as with her rhetorical symbol of the White Man.
The problem is that this is not solitaire: it is more like hide-and-seek, a game
everyone can play, and in which the seeker herself can be sought – and caught.
Mies musts have had the experience of being opposed and condemned by black
Third-World Leninist Women as a White European Bourgeois Imperialist Feminist.
So we need a holistic logic to understand a holistic world and to create a
holistic society. I think such a view would allow us to understand that new
technology is both this and that, and that we need to combine Mies’ visible
communal autarchy with the mutually beneficial international trade relationships
sought by Mitter.